


With the Brush of a Passing Soul

by DestielsDestiny



Series: Souls Not Unalike in Form [1]
Category: Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Daemon Feels, Daemon Prejudice, Daemon Separation, Father-Son Relationship, First Meetings, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Period Typical Attitudes, Set around the Pilot, Superstition, Yuletide New Year's Resolutions Challenge, the beginnings of one anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 06:36:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18544300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed[s] the evil," Mark 7: 21.





	With the Brush of a Passing Soul

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plumedy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumedy/gifts).



> AN: It’s been a while since I’ve been able to get my hands on a copy of the pilot episode, so the fudging of the continuity/details of Bell and Doyle’s first meeting isn’t entirely down to this being an AU. My apologies.

“People might, at first glance,” Arthur reasoned, “assume you were a dove.” This meager effort to reassure them both earned him a baleful glance from the vicinity of the washbasin. “A dove with red eyes? Really, Conan Doyle, what slipshod reasoning.”

 

A shudder ran through Arthur’s frame at the eerily familiar tone. His daemon chose that moment to ruffle his off-white plumage, but Arthur knew the gesture had nothing to do with a sudden, eleventh hour resurgence of their once inseparable connection of body and soul. “I wish you wouldn’t imitate Father Ruskin like that. It’s disrespectful.” Arthur closed his eyes in a premature wince before the words had truly left his mouth.

 

Of all the youthful foolishness…

 

Sure enough, _that_ received a good deal more than a baleful expression, Kakle’s hurried, “I shall see you at the lecture,” as hurt as his wing beats were hurried.

 

Watching his daemon disappear into a speck on the horizon, Arthur placed a hand against his chest, waiting, hoping.

 

Nothing.

 

With a sigh, Arthur turned back to his shaving kit.

 

None of the Jesuit fathers were separated from their daemons. Not precisely. It was considered a besetting sin to even speak of such things within the school’s walls.

 

But distance from one’s soul had never been an issue for even a one of the fathers.

 

And perhaps Father Ruskin had meant well, the day he plucked Arthur’s daemon from its perch on the boy’s shoulder, shutting the waiting drawer with a shunk that had pierced right through Arthur’s chest.

 

Perhaps he had thought himself to be saving Arthur, instructing his Eagle daemon to wrestle Arthur to the floor in the farthest corner of the school, holding him there until his shoulders were left bloody and scarred from struggling against talons that should not have been able to wound flesh at all.

 

Perhaps Father Ruskin had slept well that night, as Arthur shivered in a shirtless ball under a still locked desk, his daemon scratching weakly at the lock, the little bird’s blood dripping onto his face through the slats in a cruel parody of a benediction.

 

“Damn!” Arthur pressed his fingers against the cut on his neck, dropping the razor in his haste to preserve his shirt collar.

 

Perhaps his teachers had only wanted the best for that little boy with the red eyed daemon that was most certainly not a dove.

 

But whatever their intentions, however holy or saintly in origin, they broke something in Arthur that day. Just as they broke something in his daemon.

 

Arthur had prayed for deliverance that day. Had prayed for salvation. Had prayed for someone to _help_ them.

 

Another prayer has not passed his lips since. Not in eight years. Arthur held a plaster to his neck, reaching out along a connection he knows will be as silent and empty as it has been since the day it snapped.

 

 _I am sorry, my friend._ And if he had still harboured even an ounce of religious belief in his heart, he would have prayed that somewhere out there in the vastness of existence, someone had heard him.

 

00

 

Kakle’s waiting for him, as always.

 

Considering daemons are thought to be unable to practice independent reasoning by all but the most modern and progressive of scientific minds, or the most sentimental or spiritual of laymen, Doyle is perpetually at a loss as to how his daemon functions with such autonomy, such forethought, almost as if they truly were two separate beings…

 

Arthur cuts the thought off viciously, attempting in vain to school his flushed features into something approaching composure. He doesn’t want to think about the past, doesn’t want to dwell on the perpetual ache of emptiness beneath his breast bone, as raw and bleeding as it’s been for the past eight years.

 

He flicks his eyes up the rafters as more students flow into the room, the stragglers pressing the bodies of those already present ever closer. Kakle is almost indistinguishable from the oak of the beams, only his red eyes standing out in the gloom, and then only if one looked very, very closely.

 

It had seemed almost fun, at first, to prank and scare his mates during the rare hols away from school, Kakle hiding away out of sight, just beyond their field of vision, for just long enough to raise the hairs on the backs of people’s necks, to force them to acknowledge that Arthur truly was daemonless, if only for a few moments.

 

The fear wore on him less than the wariness that followed, the sideways glances and urgent whispers that haunted his youth intensifying with each passing moment his daemon was away from his side. One would have thought that having a bird daemon would have made the whole thing less remarkable, less to be remarked on, but if there was one thing Arthur and Kakle learned quickly, it was that there were worse things to be called than _unnatural_.

 

Witch. Those whispers had haunted his dreams, always tinged with the resonant boom of Father Ruskin’s endless sermons on the evils of wickedness and _devilry._

 

Piercing grey eyes finding him in the crowd abruptly knock the breath from his lungs, and consequently the thoughts from his skull. _That man._ Arthur feels his face flush, a desire to sink through the floor rising in his breast.

 

The sharp embarrassment whites out any remaining capacity for rumination and observation, and Arthur feels his temper rising in answer to the Professor’s, to _Bell’s_ , summons.

 

Far above his head, a clicking, warbling cackle pierces the air faintly. Arthur clenches his jaw tighter. The nerve of them, man and daemon alike.

Neil’s fox daemon runs by his shins, almost dangerously close, his friend ribbing him gently, “Bad luck Doyle, pay no mind to the old devil. Bet he’s a witch, or mad, or both.”

 

Arthur feels his insides turn to ice, unable to do anything but stare at Neil’s retreating back. Sensing his lack of movement, the man turns back. But his eyes are as guileless as his expression is open, and Arthur forces his muscles to unfreeze. He’s had more than enough uncanny remarks made about his person and past this morning already.

 

Neil has never cared about the oddity of Arthur’s relationship with his daemon, even if he’s the only one of his new friends to even be observant enough to notice anything is odd in the first place. Still, as Arthur falls into step out of the classroom, he can’t quite keep the note of anxiety out of his voice, “What did you mean, about Bell?”

 

Neil’s tone is the height of carelessness, Lucia curling about his neck, “Didn’t you notice? The man had no daemon. Not one I could see anyway. Not the whole lecture.”

 

Above their heads, Kakle soars past, a puff of displaced air brushing the back of Arthur’s neck in what once, in another time, might have felt like a caress. He shivered.

 

Affecting a tone of equal disinterest, he brushed the whole thing off, “No, I didn’t notice, as it happens.” Neil seems to buy it, heading off to his next lecture with a teasing, “Too busy being embarrassed, I expect.”

 

And with that, the oddity that is Bell’s lack of a daemon is promptly forgotten.

 

Arthur only wishes such things were so easy for him, as well.

 

00

 

It would be easier, Arthur has always suspected, if he came from a family blessed with bird daemons. Because they are supposed to be just that. Blessings. Signs from God.

 

The Fathers always said so.

 

Just not Arthur. Not Kakos.

 

Arthur had always hated that name. Hated that in catholic tradition, daemons weren’t named until they settled. Hated that he was not the one to christen his daemon.

 

Hated the looks his mother sent him, every hols, her eyes skittering over from his father to Kakos and back, the ghost of a word never passing her lips, but never far from either of their minds.

 

 _Mad._ Arthur learns to hate, to despise, that word. Almost as much as the Fathers had hated the word _witch_.

Almost as much as they had despised his daemon.

 

After, well, _after_ , Arthur had wanted nothing more than to pull Kakle close, and never let go again.

 

The pain when they attempted to do just that was infinitely more excruciating than the cold, empty ache that persisted the longer they stayed apart, but Arthur would have endured it for the rest of his life, if only for the chance to be warm again.

 

If only for the chance to feel something from his daemon, even pain.

 

And but for the pain in his mother’s eyes being just a little lessened, the more Kakos is out of sight and thus out of mind, Arthur suspects they would have endured it. On the coldest and loneliest of days, he even hopes it.

 

But even on the worst of days, he cannot stand to bring one more ounce of sorrow upon his mother’s shoulders. And neither can Kakos.

 

It is one of the few things they agree on, anymore.

 

Sometimes, Arthur suspects that the strength of that agreement is one of the only reasons he still has for waking up each day, to a room as empty and lonely as a grave.

 

00

Joseph Bell was truly one of the _oddest_ men Arthur Doyle had ever come across. As the weeks slipped by in a series of bewildering errands and secret cases, he found nothing to change that conviction. Only more evidence to add to it.

The doctor was also stone cold brilliant. A certifiable genius, even if the emphasis sometimes seemed to be on the _certifiable_ part.

But Arthur never spoke about Bell to his friends, not if he could help it. Least of all to Neil.

Largely because, after nearly seven weeks of seeing more of Bell than his own mother, Arthur had yet to find any evidence to contradict Neil’s first, sharp if callous assumption.

For all intents and purposes, Joseph Bell had no daemon.

“Why not just ask him?” Kakle hopped across Arthur’s desk, flipping over pencil stubs and notes with malicious glee. Before they settled, Kakle has been nothing so much as gentle. Kind, considerate, sensitive. Too sensitive, their father had always intoned.

But after, well. Arthur sometimes suspected his daemon was trying his level best to live up to the name he had been saddled with. “If you cannot beat them, join them, I always say.” It was one of Kakle’s favourite phrases. It never failed to make Arthur feel like crying.

 

He never dared to even think of hating the Fathers for what they did to him as a boy.

He had no such compunctions for what they did to his daemon.

Arthur nudged his most important notes, the ones for the doctor, to the relative safety of his lap, reveling in the closeness of Kakle’s feathers, even if they were both as careful as they always were to prevent actual contact. “You want me to ask Dr. Bell where his daemon is?”

One red eye regarded him with a glint that tried so, so hard to have a malevolent light to it, “Too hypocritical for you Artie?” Arthur swallowed. He _missed_ Kakos, so very much.

Almost as if he could sense the change in Arthur’s mood, Kakle snatched a paper right out of Arthur’s fingers, flitting from the room with a triumphant swoop. Arthur chuckled wetly at his antics, even as he despaired of successfully finishing revising for his chemistry finals.

As he turned back to the desk, the weight of his father’s watch pressed against his stomach, settling over the familiar hollowness. _How dare you presume to pry into my family affairs! It’s cruel, and cowardly!_

Arthur winced at the memory. Bell was neither of those things, truly. Arthur knew that for a certainty.

Not least because, nearly two months into their acquaintance, Bell had yet to so much as look at his clerk in an askance manner.

Never mind comment on his distinct lack of a visible daemon.

00

Elsbeth Scott has a beautiful daemon.

It’s one of the first things Arthur notice about her, after her fire. After her eyes.

Flitting in and out of her hair, a smudge of iridescent purple that stood out against the weathered stone of the corridor like a beacon, the minute buzz of wing beats just reaching his ears, Arthur stared, entranced.

“Her name is Kalos.” There is a warmth in those eyes, despite the reticence of her manner, despite the slight flick of her eyes, up and down, searching.

It is the only thing that prevents Arthur from chocking on the irony of it all.

A swish of air is the only warning Arthur receives before Kakos is just there, perching on a protruding bit of stone near his shoulder. “ _We_ think she is beautiful.”

It startles a laugh out of Miss Scott. It is an exquisite sound, but the warmth flooding Arthur’s veins has little to do with it.

Largely because, for the first time in almost nine years, his daemon just referred to them as we.

00

On their third case together, one of the suspects pulls out a revolver. The doctor steps in front of Arthur, his steps unairing.

Kakos dive bombs down from the sky with more swiftness than a falcon, knocking into the suspect’s hand. The man _screams._

The shot goes wide, doing nothing more than chip some old stone off the side of the neighboring building.

Kakle chooses the next moment to alight on Bell’s outstretched arm. It is dusk, just dark enough that Arthur’s daemon practically glows in the growing shadows, his white feathers a stark contrast to the dark material of Bell’s coat.

“Kakos.” Arthur’s voice breaks, little more than a rasp. Adrenaline courses through his veins, his hands twitching with the desire to caress, to hold, to _protect._

Bell’s eyes are impossible to see in this light, but the hand that finds Arthur’s shoulder in the next moment is reassuringly warm.

00

Kakle rides back in the cab with them, tucked against Bell’s great coat, head under his wing.

Bell doesn’t touch the daemon, even through his gloves. In the dark of the carriage, his eyes fixed firmly forward, he only speaks once.

“You were educated by Jesuits, I believe you said.” It isn’t a question.

Arthur swallows hard, grateful he is not obliged to make a reply.

Between them, Kakle slits open one glowing eye for a moment, then tucks his head into Bell’s lapel.

Arthur hopes it is warm.

00

Three months to the day since he first made Joseph Bell’s acquaintance, Arthur enters the laboratory to find the most exquisite snowy owl he has ever seen perched on the back of Bell’s chair.

They aren’t touching, the doctor leaning towards a specimen, giving it more scrutiny than Arthur suspects is strictly necessary.

The owl swivels its head, piercing Arthur with storm grey eyes. Bell’s head turns in the same moment. “Ah Doyle, there you are…”

They never find out how that sentence would have ended, for in that moment, something shifts around them, as the owl’s pure white body leaps into the air.

A weight settles on Arthur’s shoulder, soft, opaque feathers filling his peripheral vision.

For a long moment, Arthur forgets how to breath.

Bell regards them for a long moment, his posture as relaxed as his eyes are sharp and assessing.

“Doyle, meet Aesculapius.” _My daemon._ The words remain unuttered.

Outside the narrow laboratory window, Kakos wheels in the air, a distinct cackle ripping through the morning air. For a moment, to Arthur’s ears, it almost sounds happy.

Feathers brush his cheek, and for the first time since he was eleven years old, Arthur Doyle feels _warm._


End file.
